Justice Ajit Prakash Shah, former chief justice of Delhi high court has come down heavily on the government’s draft RTI rule which says that in one application, the applicant can ask questions related only to one subject matter.

Calling the rule ‘misconceived’, justice Shah has cited section 13 of the general clauses act, 1897. The act says that in all central acts and regulations, unless there is anything repugnant in the subject or context, words in singular shall include the plural and vice versa.

Department of personnel and training (DoPT), the administrative department for the implementation of the right to information (RTI) act, holds the view that section 6 (3) of the act makes the mention of ‘one subject matter’.

Rejecting this argument, justice Shah said, “There is absolutely nothing in Section 6 to indicate that the legislature intended that the request for information should confine to one subject only.”

He added, “The only requirement of the Section is that the request shall be in writing and accompanied by prescribed fees and the particulars of the information sought by the applicant are specified. Contrary intention to exclude the operation of the rule that the singular includes the plural cannot be inferred merely because the relevant provision is drafted in the singular. The act has been enacted to promote transparency and accountability in the working of every public authority and casts responsibility on every public authority to provide information unless
it is exempt under the act. The interpretation suggested by the department tends to defeat the very purpose of the act.”

DoPT has been maintaining that many applications are running into 10- 20 pages and a large number of issues contained in one application making it difficult for the public information officers to respond to RTI queries in time.

Draft rules were made public on December 10 last year after which DoPT had asked the public to send feedback and comments on the same.

Since then, the DoPT has held at least three meeting with the NAC working group in transparency and accountability to discuss the draft rules.

In all these meetings, DoPT rejected NAC’s views on the rules.

In a recent interview, NAC member Aruna Roy told Governance Now that while the government had taken a call on other draft rules, the ‘one subject matter’ rule was still under consideration.